Lunch at VJB

I decided I should be the one to take the picture because I wasn't color coordinated with these three...

After a walk around Spring Lake, we went to Flying goat to sip Aztek Mochas and watch the trains go by...two northbound and none southbound. Now that the train is officially running, they seem to have decided that perhaps Santa Rosa station is a 'quiet zone', for neither train blasted it's horn as it passed into or out of the station.

The house painter was sanding the large portions of the front of the house where the paint simply fell off, revealing large swatches of the black underneath. We were told that the house was at one time painted black, but we didn't really believe it...When he reached our end of the house we decided it was time to decamp to VJB for lunch and a glass of wine. We talked about where we were when the planes hit the twin towers sixteen years ago.

I feel that nothing has been the same since then. The initial response when everybody flew flags and declared solidarity has deteriorated into political dysfunction and incivility. I think that on a local scale, people still have good good instincts for helping each other, but with each degree of separation, that instinct seems to be diluted by suspicion and discontent.

I hope we can learn to bridge that gap, because I think are going to be sorely tried....